Nina Van Pallandt: Detachment is Another Way of Belonging

 

The beauty of detachment

Born 1934. At first it she was Nina Magdelena Møller. From Denmark. Then, after marrying Frederik Jan Gustav Floris, Baron van Pallandt, she became Nina, Baroness van Pallandt… or just Nina Van Pallandt. They formed an unlikely singing duo, Nina & Frederik. Sang folk music, including calypso (!?). Had chart success. Divorced. Nina became a film star. Frederick was murdered in a drug deal.

The future is calling me...

With Nina van Pallandt, the ciphers don’t line up, but still the lock opens. A mystery. We have an attractive woman who is way too European for the 1960s—and the 1960s loved all things European—or thought it did. Somehow, with that elegant poise, Teutonic mannerisms, and a royal title, maybe we understand the cultural confusion. But her awkwardness bespeaks knowledge, not nativity. It’s odd, but there’s an American vibe coming from her attitude, from the way she half-regards a threat; a rebellious nature not found down the cold corridors of the Danish Queens. Her spirit was not indolent.

Nina, a free spirit on a windy beach, the Pacific Ocean frames her figure. And that’s why Robert Altman chose her for The Long Goodbye, for the character Eileen Wade, because of her organic, outsider status. That slight, indeterminate accent that lets you know she’s a survivor. 'Yes', we feel,' she belongs in Malibu much more than Barbie'. A 1960s beach bunny wouldn’t have worked. Beauty isn’t symmetrical; it’s the appearance of symmetry. Meet Nina.

Eileen Wade. It’s her greatest role unless you count the earlier one—as a Danish folk singer married to a royal soon-to-be drug smuggler. Nina Van Pallandt proves that detachment is just another way of belonging.

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Capucine: Snow Angel

‘Capucine’. One word, an icy brand distilled from the warmer ‘Germaine Hélène Irène Lefebvre’. But then her elegance didn’t permit intimacy. And that was her appeal. A snow angel with dazzling detachment.

Who would believe such a thing?

Born 1928. A Parisian model at 17, then into films. She was surprisingly adept at comedy, a genre strangely receptive to manic depressives. Without darkness we can’t know light?

She was saved from suicide more than once, but who would believe such a thing? The cheekbones, the plush lips, swept-back mane, the porcelain skin, who would believe it?

It’s 1952 and she lands a 2-week modeling gig aboard a French cruise ship and shares a cabin with Brigitte Bardot, 17, a chorus dancer. O pillow talk. Who would believe it?

With Peter Sellers

“Men look at me,” she opined, “like I'm a suspicious-looking trunk, and they're customs agents.” There’s a difference between beautiful and pretty — and in the face of beauty men grow wary, weakened by exposure to the spiritual, anxious to resume a cosmetic, manufactured appreciation.

She also said, “"Every time I get in front of a camera, I think of it as an attractive man I am meeting for the first time...” All the best faces know — instinctively it seems — the camera is a mirror in which you

Poor Snow Angel

slowly, with great art and artifice, seduce yourself, make love to the flesh and fear and forget-me-nots that are you. But therein lays disease and finally, after injecting one too many color chemical emulsions at 1/60th of a second — a kind of walking madness. Narcissus didn’t drown. He couldn’t tolerate the terrible pain of perfection — even his own.

So in 1990, she ended herself. A bi-polar decision lending a polar patina of white frost spangled like sapphires trailing the gorgeous curve of her neck.

The word 'Capucine' is French and refers to flowers. But poor snow angels, they never live to see spring.